


2379

by sprocket



Category: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3792199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprocket/pseuds/sprocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There should be some consolation for displacement.  Elene Quen, ex-Stationmaster, 25 years after <em>Downbelow Station</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	2379

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minutia_R](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/gifts).



> Dear minutia, thank you for a wonderful prompt. The fic draws on related canon, specifically _Finity's End_ and _Merchanter's Luck_ , to start filling out events on Pell after 2353. 
> 
> Thanks to [raspberryhunter](http://raspberryhunter.dreamwidth.org/) for rapid beta. If there are complete sentences in the correct PoV, it's thanks to her.

**Pell: Green two; 9/6/79, 1830 hours Mainday**

It was vid again, vid and the soft Downer wine that sat furry on the tongue. Elene regarded the image of young Dee with resignation; resignation, and a numb acceptance. She held up the glass, swirled the drink to watch the dark liquid bead and slide back down clear glass, distorting the image of Dee's handsome features. The wine itself held little temptation, numb as she felt.

The door opened behind her. Damon, she supposed, not looking over, and the assumption proved true when a hand landed on her shoulder, a kiss to the cheek following. She turned, then, to confront his gaze: regret, and love, the partnership she'd never managed to entirely betray, in twenty-five years of bad and good choices. She managed a curve of the lips, a little lie for her husband. It just deepened the lines around his eyes, crows-feet not quite caught by rejuv. Bluff not called, but seen through, then.

"We should go out," he said. "Apartment's too quiet, with Allie and Angelo gone." But he came around the couch, settled next to her, in contradiction of his words.

She leaned against his shoulder, and impulsively leaned further, reached one arm around his shoulders. "Let Dee finish talking, first," she said. "Get our soundbites in order. _Then_ go to dinner."

He gave a little laugh at that. "Thinking of going for that Council seat?"

"Going to have to turn my hand to _honest_ work,"she said, half serious. Weeks after losing the election, it was still better with him. Easier to turn her thoughts from Dee’s voice, and the shock she hadn’t shaken off since conceding the Stationmaster's post after years - decades - in office. Easier to remember the Quen ship running free among the stars, the legacy for which she'd schemed and blackmailed and changed the course of humanity's third spacefaring power to achieve. 

The door chimed before he could answer. She let Damon untangle himself to check vid. "Josh," he said, surprised, and let Talley in.

Elene turned, then, to regard them, rising from the couch. Talley had come in civvies, spacer jacket and dockside casuals, as if a change of clothes could disguise AlSec's senior man in Pell space. "Thought you could use some company," he said, setting a bottle of Downer wine on the sideboard before giving Damon a restrained handclasp, stationer-style.

"Thought right," her husband replied. He glanced at Elene. "We were thinking of going out, later-"

"-after Dee's finished sealing Downbelow off," Elene cut in, tartly. She gave her husband's old friend, her frequent ally on Council, a proper hug in greeting. “You’re welcome to come with.”

“Drink?” Damon asked him. “There’s vodka and _pechi_ , or wine. Elene’s got a bottle started.”

“Half glass,” he said. “Dinner another time, maybe.” His eyes slid back to vid. “Any surprises yet?”

“Nothing Dee didn’t push on Council these last three years,” Damon answered for them, as she found another glass, poured and handed it to Josh. “To Pell,” Damon said, raising his glass, “and to surviving this administration.”

“Pell,” Elene echoed, tapped her glass against theirs. She had kept one eye on vid, one ear on Dee’s speech through all this, gave it more of her attention as they resettled, ready to take note of the current Stationmaster’s promises.

Young Dee, one of Miliko’s cousins, one of the faction swayed by the xenoecologists. Elene gave not a damn about the purity of _hisa_ social development, figured isolation for a lost cause from the moment humans had come to this system, and found a living world in the barrenness of the Deep. She figured it doubly lost since the War, when _hisa_ had sheltered humans on their most sacred lands, at the bottom of Pell’s precious, indefensible gravity well.

 _Contamination_ was the word Dee claimed to fear, waving it around like a stick, on vid. Contamination of Pell’s biosphere, contamination of the development of the only other sentient species humans had met. Cross-fertilization, others argued: her own brother-in-law, Damon’s brother; and his wife; and the other survivors of the Downbelow occupation, men and women sick of the War. They had looked for other answers, any answers, even outside their own species. She was wary of both camps, of their ideologies raised to religion. Even basic concepts - war, peace, friend - were tricky, between their species. _The researchers say 'friend' is a loose translation,_ Miliko had remarked to her, once. _There might be other ways of saying it in their languages, but for humans_ hisa _lump a lot of concepts - companion, teammate, lover - into that word. Even our experts aren't sure if there's a breakdown, between their understanding of humans and ours, or if that’s how we look to them._ It was a thought that rolled around in her head as she settled on one end of the couch, large enough for three, distracting her from Dee’s words.

Impolitic, perhaps, to sit with the heads of Pell’s Legal Affairs department and Pell’s AlSec presence, scribbling responses on a TranSlate, half an ear on Damon and Josh’s occasional remark. Intimate politics, if not the sort of intimacy her political foes insinuated. The sort that were the reason behind conflict of interest declarations and anti-fraternization regulations: the trading of favors influenced by personalities, not the electorate's dispassionate, abstracted best interests.

"Best interests", hell. The Dees and Velasquezes, the Willets and Ushants, had been in bed long before a starfaring Quen had taken an interest in a Konstantin. A love-match, that had been, but a match not opposed, not at all, by her aunts and uncles. And one they both were better for, she believed. Had to believe, fiercely, as her husband, her partner - _he you friend_ , the _hisa_ always said - looked up from vid, catching the shift in her mood.

"Foreign policy," Josh was saying. "Dee's sewn up the special interests on-station, but all of them rely on the trade that comes across the docks. Dee's domestic affairs. She's got no sense of the odder edges of the Alliance, let alone Union's politics." Damon nodded, with a quirk of his mouth: his assessment, coming from her husband’s other student of Pell’s governance and history. Still an unlikely pair, she thought, a set that could turn heads. Her husband's olive cast and dark, good-natured eyes, complemented by the conservative suit-jacket thrown over the back of the couch, a sharp contrast to Talley's lean, sharp fairness. 

A person could look, if she knew better than to act. Paradoxes, always paradoxes: Pell elected a spacer as Stationmaster, and her enemies expressed surprise her morals embraced a wider understanding than Pell's narrow expectations of pairing off. Spouses, coupled up, as if a hundred years of merchanter experience were still a shock to straight-laced stationers. They'd had that conversation, obliquely, her and Josh. A working lunch, dockside, in the years she had held the dockmaster's office, when Josh had been on and off _Norway_ 's pirate hunt, before assuming the management of Alliance Security’s diverse offices on Pell. A comparison of conflicts of interests: merchanters whose greatest taboo was a sleepover onship; the military’s solutions to long voyages in the Deep, and profound suspicion of those who weren’t part of their tight-knit crews; stationers whose relationships prized the stability all aspects of station life coveted.

There had been some scandal at the time, a messy falling-out between a young stationer elected to minor office and an off-Station lover. An early warning for her political career, of necessary compromises in her public and private lives; of the trades she would risk – or not risk – to restore the Name so many thought lost to the War. 

_Chaos_ , Josh had said, of the War, unsmiling, their sandwiches and papers forgotten. _Utter chaos, and neither of us in good shape. And Damon – wouldn’t have understood._ And into a pause, seemingly unconnected: _If you’re serious about filing for election…_

Stationers, she thought, and stationer morals. Josh had understood that, perhaps before she had. She could recall her youthful uncertainty on Pell’s war-scarred decks, young and pregnant and surrounded by merchanters, seeing her husband and Josh stand by each other like brothers, like old friends, intimate in ways defined by their survival through Pell’s worst days. A brotherhood she had no place in, she who had survived the Mazianni occupation in the Deep, among the merchanters, about which she had made assumptions.

They had talked, she and Damon, fragments of conversations over weeks and months, relearning each other as they built the Merchanter’s Alliance from the station core out. 

_If you had,_ she had said to her husband, _I wouldn’t have minded. Not with a friend._

Damon dropped his glass, hurt flashing across his face. Downer wine splashed across the table. _Think I’d do that to you?_ he’d cried out. They’d both had words, said things that, couldn’t be unspilled. They’d both had words, said things that couldn’t be unspilled. It had been patched up, eventually. Part of their bond, one reason their marriage had lasted against all odds: Damon would always listen, if she gave him reason, however outrageous her proposal first sounded to his sensibilities.

Josh was good company, tonight, reminding them both of other days in this apartment. Strategy sessions before Council. Late nights crafting replies to Union's erosion of the treaty, in the '60s. Hustling Alicia and Angelo out the door, hyped and happy for this or that treat. A better ally than she deserved, she thought, though only the friend her husband was due.

She hissed, air sliding between her teeth, as Dee switched topics, delicately alluding to _the balance of trade_ and _local interests_ , running up to the announcement Elene dreaded most.

“If she cuts the shipyards,” she snapped, in genuine anger. The FTL yards, expensive, demanding, the lifeblood of the Merchanter’s Alliance.

“The Mariner yards,” Josh reminded her, economically. 

“We skimmed their best talent for Pell,” Elene countered. “Didn't see my ship built at Mariner, and _Finity's End_ doesn't go anywhere but our shipyards for repairs. We got them out here on our word - my word, as Stationmaster, and a damn stack of money if their contracts are broken. If I were in office… but I'm not Stationmaster any more," she finished, bitterly.

Damon shook his head, hearing those words, then noticed Josh, an unlikely look crinkling the corners of his eyes. "No," Josh said, very still, "you're not."

Elene looked back at Josh. First one corner of her mouth, then the other, turned up. "No," she agreed, "I'm not." Cushions shifted under her as she stretched and resettled closer to her husband, remembering those long ago conversations.

"Should have some compensations," Josh remarked, leaning back into the couch. Almost casual... if she could ignore the knee crowding her husband’s, the shift in the room as the Council politely applauded Dee's closing words. No cuts, not for the shipyards, not this year. Elene felt something relax in her, unwound for the first time in weeks, even as Damon, damn his fine morals, tensed in worry.

"Wait," he said. "This isn't - there's things we should discuss."

She looked at Josh. "Stationer," she said, wry. "They get like this."

Before Damon could sputter out a reply, Josh dropped an arm around his shoulders. Josh dropped an arm around his shoulders to draw him close. "Damon," he said. "Friend. We've been talking for twenty years." And his rare smile, always such a surprise on that serious face... finally, finally she saw Damon lean into it, that tight concern unwinding, at the suggestion that darkened those pale eyes. "Time to try something else with all those fine words."


End file.
